Category: Speaking
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People’s History Museum
Left Bank
Manchester
M3 3ER
Thursday, 13 July 2017 18:00 to 20:00
Book your FREE place

Join Manchester Digital Music Archive for the launch of our small but perfectly formed Queer Noise community exhibition at the People’s History Museum. Curator Abigail Ward will be in conversation with Rod Connolly and Zoë McVeigh (LIINES) – the DJ/promoter team behind Bollox Club – one of Manchester’s best-loved alt-queer hangouts.

Abigail will also deliver a lively visual presentation celebrating highlights from the history of queer music and club life in Greater Manchester. Material includes rarely seen photos, flyers, posters and videos from the 1950s to today.

In the foyer DJ Kath McDermott will play classic tracks from legendary queer nights Flesh at the Haçienda (1991-1996) and Homo Electric (1998-2002).

Performance artist Grace Oni Smith will be doing a 10-min projection-based ‘Welcome’ performance in response to the DJ set.

Fairtrade drinks provided by the Co-op.

Queer Noise tells the story of how proudly queer musicians and clubbers in Greater Manchester helped to redefine attitudes towards sexuality across the city and beyond. The exhibition is on display at PHM from July 1st until September 10th and is based on the digital project of the same name.

I am something of a Madchester sceptic. I was too young to appreciate the first wave and by the time I started going out around ’93 it felt like tired music that belonged to the people I wanted to avoid – thick lads who would bang into you on the dancefloor for kicks.

When it came to DJing at the event I decided simply to play some records that meant a lot to me at that time, and some more recent stuff that is audibly in thrall to that era.

Idjut Boys – Dub Shine (2015)

This came out on the Idjuts’ ‘Versions’ album from last year. Does it for me.

I miss Kirsty. Can you imagine what she’d have to say about the current political climate?

Steve Mason – Words In My Head (2016)Will you love me when I fall?’

Just seemed to fit. The ‘words in his head’ aren’t up to much, admittedly.

The Boo Radleys – Lazarus (1993)‘While those around me are beaten down each day…’

Their masterpiece. Boos guitarist Martin Carr lived in Preston (my hometown) at this time. In our social circle there was much discussion about who’d seen Martin last, where it was (Action Records?) and if he’d said anything. Desperate times indeed.

The House of Love – Feel (1992)‘Twenty-five/sick of life’

I was 14 when the ‘Babe Rainbow’ album came out. I first heard ‘Feel’ on Mark Goodier’s Evening Session. I played it to death that year, along with ‘Automatic For The People’ and The The’s ‘Dusk’. My Maths teacher at the time was content to let me listen to my Alba walkman at the back of the class during most of his lessons. I learnt a great deal.

Saint Etienne – Avenue (1992)‘Oh how many years is it now, Maurice?’

So perfect I can’t bear to write about it.

Prefab Sprout – Let There Be Music (1993)‘Hey Jules and Jim/I wrote the hymn to Ecstasy’

From Paddy’s lost 1993 album ‘Let’s Change the World with Music’, which he wrote, performed and produced at his Andromeda Heights studio in County Durham. Intended to be the follow up to ‘Jordan: The Comeback’, but not released until 2009. Utterly beautiful.

Electronic – Getting away With It (Extended Mix) (1989)‘I’ve been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose’

I nearly went for Greg Wilson’s 11-minute edit, but managed to curb myself.

Lake Heartbeat – Mystery (2009)‘You said love would last…’

Swedish band recommended by my old Piccadilly Records comrade Andy McQueen, the king of wistful melodic pop. Dan Lissvik (Studio/The Crepes) on guitar.

Ducktails – International Dateline (2012)

Lovely instrumental from the ‘Flower Lane’ album.

Cashier No.9 – Oh Pity (2011)‘Burnt out at the fine old age of seventeen’

Underrated sunshine pop on Bella Union. These lot now make music under the moniker exmagician.

Whyte Horses – The Snowfalls (2014)‘Just keep on running for the morning’

So contagious. Gets wedged in your head to the point of irritation. Coming soon to an advert near you. They’re from Manchester dontcha know.

Primal Scream – Higher Than The Sun (1991)‘A higher state of grace’

Recommended to me in about 1993 by an older boy I thought was the coolest of the cool. (He was a towering bellend in actuality.) Saw the Scream for the first time at Glastonbury in 2005. They whizzed me round the cosmos and back, but to be fair I had just ingested two very large hash truffles. I became convinced that ‘Swastika Eyes’ was about Paul O’Grady.

One Dove – Breakdown (Cellophane Boat Mix) (1993)‘And the small hours are hard to bear’

I don’t think this mix (by Weatherall, of course) reached me at the time. Got into it via the Boy’s Own retrospective from 2013. Gorgeous.

Spiritualized – Run (1992)‘They call me the breeze / I keep rollin’ down the road’

I saw Spritualized at the free Heineken Festival on Avenham Park, Preston in 1993. I’d arranged to go with my best mate but at the last minute she opted to go to a house party, drink Thunderbird and attempt to divest herself of her virginity instead. Initially I was a bit scared to be on my own in the moshpit, but the gig was really something: intense and unforgettable. I think I had to endure the Sultans of Ping FC before they came on. In later years I found Spiritualized rather ponderous and grandiose.

The Orb – Blue Room (1992)

Ah…The Orb. I had a real soft spot for them up to about 1994. I still listen to a fair amount of dub techno, mainly Deepchord and Rhythm & Sound, but these producers owe a debt to Paterson, Cauty et al. Famously samples Mad Professor’s ‘Fast Forward Into Dub’. The Orb caused controversy by appearing on Top of the Pops to promote the Blue Room. Instead of performing, Alex Paterson and Kris Weston played chess.

I loved the straight version of ‘Uptown’ when it came out, especially Mani’s bassline. I first heard the Weatherall mix in DJ and producer Kelvin Andrews’ car on the way to an after party in the early hours. When the strings hit, I was so overwhelmed I vomited explosively into Kelvin’s glove compartment. He was a true gent about it, but this track will forever be tainted with the memory.

Mark Seven – Sermon (Serotonin Edit) (2007)

So perfect an Ecstasy record it’s almost manipulative! ‘Sermon’ is a Mark Seven edit of Sheila Stewart’s ‘It’s You’ from 1988, which came out on the aforementioned Kelvin Andrews’ Creative Use label.

Jon Savage (writer, social commentator, broadcaster & author of England’s Dreaming/Teenage/1966) in conversation with Abigail Ward (Manchester Music District Archive).

Preceded with a rare showing of the iconic ‘Weekender’ short by Flowered Up at 6.30pm.

The topic will be late 80s early 90s ‘Madchester’ and the Baggy musical scene that defined it . Also under discussion will be the critically acclaimed album Jon produced for CTR last year – Perfect Motion: A Secret History of Second Wave Psychedelia 1988-93 – and its distinctive take on the era.

The Stone Roses, their influence, legacy and reformation will also be on the musical agenda. A must for fans of the music and culture of that era!

Join Manchester Pride in the historic Chief Librarian’s room at Central Library for a fascinating training session on uncovering LGBT histories in Greater Manchester. Learn about viewing, handling and digitising rarely seen material held by a range of archives. Find out how you can contribute to the digital exhibition space at Archives+. This is a free, friendly event. All welcome!

OUT! is a project celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender histories across Greater Manchester using digital technologies. It is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and delivered by Manchester Pride.

This 3-hour training session, led by David Govier (Archives+) and Abigail Ward (Manchester District Music Archive), is aimed at equipping LGBT history enthusiasts with the skills required to interrogate archives and open up access to our city’s LGBT heritage, which, due to legislation and social stigma, has often remained hidden.

The session will be held in the beautiful, wood-panelled Chief Librarian’s Office, which also offers a top-floor vista of the bustling Oxford Road corridor.

Central Library is wheelchair accessible. If you are interested in attending this event and would like to discuss your access requirements, please contact: abigail@manchesterpride.com

Booking is via Eventbrite. Please note: places are limited, so we’d be grateful if you could let us know if you can’t attend.

Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the ‘Manchester bomb’, widely recognised as the catalyst for Greater Manchester’s twenty-first-century regeneration, MMU is holding an academic symposium and public-engagement launch on June 15th to celebrate Manchester’s phenomenal redevelopment over the past twenty years.

Who is Greater Manchester?

This panel will look at Manchester identities as they relate to music, football and LGBT communities. To what extent do the Premier League, the Factory legacy and the Gay Village promote and complement the multitude of Manchester’s histories of success, and how can we make the most of the manifold futures signposted by the city’s rich history and diverse heritage?

My talk will explore how queer music culture in Manchester helped to redefine attitudes to sexuality across the city and beyond, featuring rarely seen images and footage courtesy of Manchester District Music Archive.

I will be speaking in The Picture House next door to Band on the Wall at 8.30pm, and after that I will be raving in the main venue to DJ Greg Thorpe and some of my favourite Manchester bands: LIINES / Husk / ILL / Ménage à Trois

Join Manchester Pride for a day of training on recording interviews and oral histories within the LGBT community. This event is part of OUT! – a Heritage Lottery-funded project exploring hidden LGBT histories in Greater Manchester. Learn how to capture spoken word recollections and preserve them for future generations. This is a free, friendly event and lunch will be provided. All welcome!

OUT! is a project celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender histories across Greater Manchester using digital technologies. It is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and delivered by Manchester Pride.

This event, led by Dr Fiona Cosson (MMU) and Abigail Ward (Manchester District Music Archive), will be a fun and friendly day aimed at equipping LGBT history enthusiasts with the skills required to record and preserve oral histories for future generations.

It will be of particular interest to members of the community who feel they would like to highlight elements of our city’s history, which, due to legislation and social stigma, have remained hidden.

Trainees will learn about best practice in oral history, interview techniques, use of mp3 recorders, basic audio editing and preparing files for submission to the sound archives held by Archives+ at Central Library.

Some recordings will be chosen to feature in the digital exhibition space at Archives+ and will also form part of the OUT! online portal to be launched in June.

Archives are closely linked with how we understand history and can be a site for resistance and celebration in challenging how history is defined. Abigail Ward and Sarah Feinstein will speak about how this relates to women’s performance through Manchester District Music Archive. Drawing from selection of artefacts in the user-generated collection, Abigail will showcase women’s agency in the history of music, politics and protest in Greater Manchester. Sarah will discuss how a previous online exhibition curated by Abigail led her to a conversation with ground-breaking feminist artist Linder Sterling.

Co-founders Alison Surtees and Abigail Ward discuss the development of their groundbreaking project, which allows users to preserve, share and research their own musical heritage through digitised ephemera such as tickets, photos, press articles, posters and video. The talk will chart the rise of MDMArchive; the difficulties encountered; and how these challenges, such as who ‘owns’ heritage and who ‘decides’ what is shown, were overcome through user-generated content. MDMArchive has been at the forefront of developments in community-led digital storytelling for over ten years. This talk will explore why digital environments are important for sharing heritage, destabilising dominant historical narratives and opening up access to archival material for many to enjoy and have ownership of.

The Pararchive project explores open access community storytelling and the digital archive.

In late 2009 I acquired a small amount of funding to develop ‘Queer Noise’ – an online exhibition for Manchester District Music Archive that aimed to lift the lid on LGBT music-making and club life in Greater Manchester from the sixties to the present day. The exhibition would harness and contextualise scanned ephemera, such as posters, flyers, photos and press articles uploaded to MDMArchive by members of public all over the world, in addition to my own collection of artefacts, which I had been digitising for a number of years.

Launched in 2010, ‘Queer Noise’ now contains over two hundred chronologically ordered images and written recollections, and continues to grow as more and more people share their memories. A selection of these artefacts will form the basis of my short presentation to the LGBT History Festival in February.

In my talk for I will be examining three key points in the city’s LGBT music history: the birth of punk in 1976; the house music explosion of the early 90s: and the alt-gay scene which developed a decade later as a response to the homogeneity of the music on offer on Canal Street (Manchester’s gay village).

In the summer of 1976, punk hit Manchester following the Sex Pistols’ pivotal brace of gigs at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. Misunderstood by many as an aggressive, negative force, the early punk scene in Manchester celebrated difference; fostered a DIY approach to creativity and self-expression; and created a tightly knit music community, which (for the most part) welcomed LGBT young people. Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks, who co-promoted the Pistols’ second gig, was openly bisexual and sang about romantic experiences with both men and women in a very straightforward way. But ‘76 was also the year in which James Anderton began his tenure as Chief Constable, marking the beginning of a sustained period of harassment of Manchester’s LGBT community by police. Punk historian Jon Savage said of this time, ‘Manchester felt under lock-down then: if you were out late at night, you’d get stopped at least twice a week. It wasn’t just gay people, it was anyone who looked and acted different.’

Fast forward to 1990 and we see the launch of Manto on Canal Street – a sophisticated European-style bar that deliberately flouted the prevailing ‘behind closed doors’ culture of gay venues by installing full height plate glass windows. Thanks to DJ Tim Lennox, house music took hold at Central Street’s gay-friendly Number 1 Club, which in turn led to the birth of Flesh at the Haçienda – a wildly successfully Ecstasy-fuelled house and garage night flagrantly billed as ‘Serious Pleasure for Dykes and Queers’. It was during this time that the city was dubbed ‘Gaychester’, the first Mardi Gras happened, Canal Street boomed and Manchester City Council truly cottoned on to the potential of the pink pound.

Flesh lasted until 1996, spawning many copycat club nights and, along with the Number 1 Club and Paradise Factory, was responsible for the making house music the dominant sound of ‘Gaychester’. But by 1998, some of the same DJs, promoters and club goers that had inspired the house boom were growing tired of the commercialisation of both the scene and the music. At this point, LGBT club nights boasting a more eclectic soundtrack spanning funk, soul, disco, hip hop and indie began to emerge. Club Brenda and Homo Electric were at the forefront of this movement. Like the punk scene that had come before, these clubs celebrated difference, with flyers boasting slogans such as ‘Music is life, gym is the coffin, be ugly‘.

As well as flyers, posters, gig tickets and photos, my presentation will include some unseen footage of Manchester’s gay clubs, plus excerpts of oral histories captured exclusively for the festival.

If you would like to add any artefacts or recollections to the Queer Noise online exhibition, please register to become a member of Manchester District Music Archive here and start sharing your history. Alternatively, you can email: info@mdmarchive.co.uk.